What Reaching Teaches
Consciousness, Control, and the Inner Zombie
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8399198 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andy Clark (0000-0002-1233-8629, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 563-594 |
| Publication date | 2007-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0882 • E-ISSN: 1464-3537 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjps/axm030 |
| OpenAlex | W2129247745 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
| References cited | 38 |
What is the role of conscious visual experience in the control and guidance of human behaviour? According to some recent treatments, the role is surprisingly indirect. Conscious visual experience, on these accounts, serves the formation of plans and the selection of action types and targets, while the control of ‘online’ visually guided action proceeds via a quasi-independent non-conscious route. In response to such claims, critics such as (Wallhagen [2007], pp. 539–61) have suggested that the notions of control and guidance invoked are unacceptably vague, and that that the image of ‘zombie systems’ guiding action fails to take account of the possibility that there is genuine but unconceptualized, unnoticed, and/or unreportable experience taking place and guiding or controlling the actions. I address both sets of concerns. I try to show that refining and clarifying the key notions of control and guidance leaves the original argument intact, as does the appeal to unconceptualized, unnoticed, or unreportable experiences. The exercise serves, however, to highlight an important complex of considerations concerning the relations between control, agency, and experience. Better understanding these relations is, I suggest, an important source of insights concerning the nature of phenomenal experience.
Action (physics) · Agency (philosophy) · Appeal · Argument (complex analysis) · Cognitive science · Computer security · Consciousness · Control (management) · Epistemology · Key (lock) · Political science · Selection (genetic algorithm) · Zombie · Action Observation and Synchronization · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology
Supersizing the Mind
Expecting some action
Visual experience in the predictive brain is univocal, but indeterminate
Conscious vision guides motor action—rarely
Phylogenetic Distribution and Trajectories of Visual Consciousness
Why the Pictorial Needs the Motoric
Are there unconscious perceptual processes
A distinction concerning vision-for-action and affordance perception
Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception
Are there subintentional actions
The where of bodily awareness
Between vision and action
Visual phenomenology versus visuomotor imagery
The two visual systems hypothesis and contrastive underdetermination
Knowing what we can do
Seeing colours unconsciously
Visual Streams as Core Mechanisms
Aesthetics and Cognitive Science
Seeing, Doing, and Knowing
Motor Cognition
The Theory of Event Coding (TEC)
Size-contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand
A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness
Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action
Toward a Theory of Visual Consciousness
Emergence of self and other in perception and action
Experience And The Active Mind
Visual Experience and Motor Action
Consciousness and Action
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,06 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2024 (17) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 19 |